The Australian Broadband Guarantee

[stephbg]

Remind me to never investigate government services of any kind. In theory I qualify for support under the Australian Broadband Guarantee because I cannot access wireless or ADSL broadband services comperable to the alleged metropolitan standard.

I think.

To prove this I need to make and document about 20 phone calls, to each and every ISP who theoretically might provide service to my location. And fill in a bunch of forms etc etc. And if I do get satellite, it's not actually guaranteed to be up to speed if it's raining, for example. Raining in one of multiple possible locations. I might be no better off than the crappy mobile narrowband I've got now.

Gah. Government websites always fill me with rage. Possibly because I only ever look at them when something's gone bad, like tax, death, car accidents, or chronic illness. There's a thought. Poor websites.

Grrrr.

Comments

[baby-elvis.livejournal.com]

Grrrrr.

I had noticed that our connection drops out more when it's raining.

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

I thought you had ADSL? Perhaps it drops out when it's raining because everyone's inside using the net.

[baby-elvis.livejournal.com]

Apparently we do have ADSL. Whoops.

[bunny-m.livejournal.com]

It could be that it drops out more because certain monopolists employ lazy morons, who sometimes 'seal' the cables in such wonderful insulators as newspaper, cling-wrap, alfoil, or nothing at all.

Funnily enough, the quality of the line drops when the pits fill with water. >.>

[bunny-m.livejournal.com]

Okay, speaking as a tech-support-phone-monkey for one of those ISPs, here's my take on Satellite:

It's expensive. Not quite as bad as mobile broadband, but not anywhere near as cheap as ADSL.

It's delicate. Frequent problems that crop up include heavy rain/cloud-cover over the customer, or the gateway. (Of which we have two, Kalgoorlie and Broken Hill, picked precisely because they rarely get heavy cloud-cover/rain. Electrical storms will majorly futz with the signal, 'cause this is micrwave, folks.

To be continued...

[bunny-m.livejournal.com]

It's got a decent throughput speed, usually, but it will *feel* much slower than technically the same speed ADSL, because of the sheer distance involved. 35,786 km above mean sea level, folks. Even light takes a while to do that distance. And it has to do that trip four times for each packet you send. (Up to satellite, down to gateway, internet, gateway to satellite, satellite to you.) This means you will have a latency of roughly a second on every action you take. This is noticeable.

The broadband guarantee means you get the equipment and a 1 year warranty. If anything serious goes wrong after that, and they can't resolve it remotely, then you have to agree to a call out fee that starts at $200, goes up with distance the tech has to travel. The cost of actually replacing any parts is horrifying as well. ~$1000 for the modem alone, and ~$3000 for all of it.

The dish is pretty damn securely seated, but it's also by necessity very precisely pointed. Satellites are really small when you are pointing at them from that far away.

Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion...

[bunny-m.livejournal.com]

Because of the distance, again, they use and pump out a serious amount of electricity. I don't even want to think about what effect it would have on my power bill, nor do I especially want to contemplate any vertebrate passing in front of the dish when at full power.

It may be different for other satellite providers/networks, but our wholesaler really needs a boot up the arse with their complete lack of user-friendliness. You can only log into the modem page with Internet Explorer, and the URL for that page is: http://192.168.5.100:8080/xWebGateway.cgi

Get any of that address slightly wrong, and it won't work/display properly, which means we can't even start troubleshooting the issue for you, and will be left with two pieces of advice for you:

1) Turn it off, unplug the power, *then* unscrew/remove the sending and receiving cables (lots electricity, remember, folks,) and then leave for 30 minutes, return all cables in reverse order, turn it on, wait 10 minutes and then call us back if it still isn't working.

or

2) Wait it out.

Note: We *will* also ask you to do 1) before we can pass it up the chain to level 2 Support. Otherwise it'll get refused and then we'll have to call you back and then get you to do it.

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info, but boo!

*is grudgingly grateful for mobile broadband even at dialup speed*

[bunny-m.livejournal.com]

NP. I feel all virtuous 'cause I managed to info-dump about work in a good cause. *buffs hails on shirt*

[fred-mouse.livejournal.com]

*iz worried about where you are getting hails at this time of year*